Barcelona (EFE).- The Barcelona sculptor Jaume Plensa puts his sculptures of “silence” in dialogue with Gaudí’s La Pedrera building, in an exhibition in this emblematic modernist house that covers its fifty years of creation, illustrated through his more intimate work.
The exhibition, which will be open to the public until July 23, reviews the work of one of the most recognized sculptors in international contemporary art and, as the curator, Javier Molins, explained this Thursday, “uses as a guiding thread the Plensa’s relationship with literature, especially with poetry”.
Molins has located Plensa’s work in the artistic tradition, “the monumental sculpture that was born in Egypt but also practiced in Central America by the Olmec culture or on Easter Island”, that tradition that shows that “distortion can be beautiful as in the Greco or in Giacometti”.
A more intimate and unknown Jaume Plensa
The retrospective, which includes the production of the Catalan sculptor from 1988 to the present, with a work from 2023, shows a more unknown, intimate and conceptual Plensa with a series of small-format pieces made in the 1990s, and even reveals the public some unpublished sculptures created by the artist during the confinement of the covid pandemic.
For the sculptor, this exhibition is a “summary” of his career, very special because “it is done in my city, in this iconic building and by the figure of Gaudí, who has always been singing words to my ear”, Jaume has indicated. Plensa in the presentation.
That look back has revealed to Plensa that for fifty years “I have been talking about silence, the impossibility of sleeping, the use of iron, wood, glass, and also words through the texts of my favorite poets.”
“As an artist you try to make bottles so that the message reaches as far as possible, but the important thing is the message, and La Pedrera was Gaudí’s bottle and now we are reading the message”, reflected the sculptor, who assures: “The exhibition It will start when it is finished in July.”
He has confessed that, when he discovered poetry, he set that mental table on four legs: “Dante, Baudelaire, William Blake and Shakespeare, and from these emerged other derivatives, other tables supported by other poets, such as the Valencian Vicent Andrés Estellés in Catalan or José Ángel Valente in Spanish”.
More than illustrating the poets, Plensa prefers to “share insights with them” and the exhibition is full of small approximations to “understand that art is a common bond that unites us through beauty”.
In the exhibition itinerary you can see emblematic works, such as “Tel Aviv”, in which he used letters to shape a human being for the first time; or two Carrara marble heads with different carved alphabets that dialogue with Gaudí, who also engraved phrases on the façade and on the columns.
outdoor sculptures
Outside the exhibition hall, ten medium- and large-format pieces have been installed in various spaces in La Pedrera.
On the roof, you can see “Silent Music IV” (2019) and “Day-Night” (2012), which “will light up the Barcelona night”; in the courtyards “Overflow” (2023) and “Together” (2014), the latter made for the exhibition that took place at the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore during the 2015 Venice Biennale; in the attic, three versions of “Hortensia” (2022), two in bronze and one in wood, and two of “Martina” (2021); and on the street, presiding over the main façade, “Flora” (2021).
Plensa has revealed that he is currently working with works in Indiana (USA), Leuven (Belgium), an exhibition in Chicago and he does not have the feeling that he is missing anything, he said when asked about the failed attempt to locate one of his sculptures monuments on the Barcelona coast.
“I am usually associated with the public space for these monumental and iconic pieces in some cities, but this exhibition makes me excited that it is in my city, in the Gaudí bottle that also has a message, and also forms part of the memory that the exhibition is building.”
However, Plensa added, “of course I would like to do a piece here to leave it for our future generations.”